M1
by Innocuate
Summary: Good friends, Augie and Deveno, are pulled into lives of terror as nightmarish fiends begin stalking them. Powerless against the likes of Slenderman and the Rake, they are driven away from their homes to a life on the run.
1. Pilot

It's a Friday afternoon in the middle of fall. The sky is a light grey and the weather is quite dry, with temperatures not exceeding sixty degrees. Two young men walk up a leaf-ridden sidewalk, oblivious to the traffic passing them. They don't often identify themselves by their own names—often starting conversations between themselves with "Hey" and then suddenly "Did you hear…?" Knowing each other well enough to not have to exchange greetings beforehand. For the sake of storytelling, they're preidentified as Deveno and Augie—who were at the time arguing over design ideas for a science project.

"That's a terrible idea. Really?" Deveno replied.

"Yeah, it's better than some stupid metal box with chassis and all."

"But how would LED's even work? You'd need a light sensor or something, and that would cost more and be harder to program than all of this together."

"Well… Um… You just know it's a better idea. Definitely better than yours."

"Goddamn, no it isn't. I shouldn't let you guys come up with new ideas while I'm not there. Try to take one day off to finish up an English presentation…"

"Hey, you can't assume leadership over the whole fucking thing! This is our project! What an asshole."

"Alright, I'm sorry. Whatever, you know I didn't mean it. Just try to come up with more _practical_ ideas, okay?"

"Shut up."

They reached the pinnacle of a hill and checked all sides of an intersection, about to cross it. Making their way across Deveno took a shortcut through a grassy area betwixt roads, and Augie followed. They continued conversing, a little less heatedly now. Beginning across a bridge Deveno pulled out his phone, replying to a text, and Augie brought up a discontinued conversation about marijuana. His friend nodded in approval for awhile, and, once he put away his phone, added his own insight to the discussion, which Augie pondered. They were now on a road surrounded by trees, as was much of the small city.

"So, are you going to be able to sleep over?" Augie asked.

"Yeah, I will. What do you want to do when we get there? Head to the shopping center or something?"

"Maybe. Do you think they have some Skyrim demo in there? That'd be awesome."

"Dude that would be great! I doubt it though. They're not that classy."

"Yeah, I guess so."

So began a long discussion on video games of sorts, which was usually where their conversations strayed. As they talked they made their way closer and closer to Augie's house, at which they soon arrived. Deveno talked with his friend's parents for a second, having known them since he was a child, and then they descended downstairs to Augie's room. It was quite comfortable, with just enough living space for a fifteen-year-old and company. Deveno immediately pulled out his laptop and Augie started up a game of Halo: Reach with a few friends of his. They rarely left the room after such, and had dinner around eight. Augie was Jewish while Deveno wasn't religious at all, but they had been around each other so much that the latter knew most of the prayers and goings-on of the tradition. They had spaghetti.

Staying up until one chatting and playing games, they decided to go to bed. The owner of the room didn't have a second bed or sleeping bag to give, so, as usual, Deveno arranged pillows on the floor in such a fashion that they would be comfortable to spend the night on. Asking for a blanket, Augie procured one from another family member's room, and once they were both comfortable in their separate sleeping areas the lights were turned off. In less than thirty minutes they were both asleep.

-x-

The sky was a beautiful dark blue, and yellow streetlights brought out the oranges of fallen leaves on the sides of roadways. It was not at all humid and a bit above fifty degrees, the perfect time for a two 'o clock walk around the block. Deveno woke up. This wasn't the first time this had happened at his friend's house—the pillows he slept on often shifted out of position and dropped him on the cold, fake word floors, bring him out of his slumber. Very tired, his eyes only opened halfway, and he looked towards Augie and then the window on the left side of the room, searching for a light source.

His eyes shot open, but he suddenly became very weak—almost frozen in place. A figured blocked the small amount of light coming from the window, that of a man, or… No, it was inhuman. Deveno was fixated upon the thing, and all of his thoughts left him—he wanted to say "No" or "Help" or "Stop", but his lips could not even begin to make up the words. Augie did not stir. Not a sound was made, and the figure stared through the window, directly at Deveno.

Suddenly, an active state of mind reacted to Deveno's situation. He quickly pulled himself under his friend's bed, slipping off the pillows but making not a sound. His ears were filled with a strange cacophony of sound, like a low earthquake or omnipotent gust of wind through a wide pipe. He was crying and didn't know why. Curling up into a fetal position, he closed his eyes, praying to whatever higher powers did or didn't exist that it was all a dream. For ten minutes he did this.

He opened his eyes.

Two incredibly black shoes, out of nowhere, stood next to the bed. The door had not opened, no steps had been taken. Deveno could see nothing but the shoes, but knew perfectly well what wore them. Suddenly, it was unbearably hot in the room, and Deveno pissed himself. His vision was leaving him, but he could still see the shoes—and they slowly parted as the figure crouched to meet Deveno's eyes under the bed. He suddenly choked and passed out, succumbing again to sleep.


	2. Discomfort

Blue. The walls were usually a pale yellow, but the morning light cast a cool blue on the room. It was going to be a sunny and nice day, but cold. A bird or two sung, but many had already migrated south for the coming winter. Within the room the temperatures were only five degrees off the chilly forty-eight outside, since there were no nearby vents blowing warm air into the basement room. A man descended the stairs to the cellar. He was almost fifty years old, balding, sporting a salt and peppery beard. Shuffling towards his studio, he sat in from of and turned on a computer, having to work from home. Silence, apart from hushed keystrokes, hung in the air downstairs.

The cold made Deveno uncomfortable, and he tried to curl himself into a smaller, tighter ball in his sleep, but found this to be impossible. Augie had not moved since he had succumbed to slumber, and was not disturbed by the chill, although he was under little more than sheets. The room became brighter by the minute, but only by little, and after thirty minutes the sun still had yet to make a visible appearance. It was a Saturday and no cars had moved on the street outside. The man, who was Augie's father, was the only one awake in the house.

Eventually the temperature woke Deveno, who was still under his friend's bed. Groggy, he brought his head up, only to have it greeted by the metal frame of the sleeping apparatus. He did not hit it hard enough to cause much pain, but was confused as to why he was below it. He remembered nothing of the events that had taken place at two o' clock that morning. He crawled out from under the bed, back on to the pillows he had arranged on the floor, and fell back asleep.

-x-

Four hours passed. The sun had risen. Augie's mother and one of his brothers were awake, the latter watching television upstairs. The noise made from the mother entering the above kitchen woke Deveno up again. Not finding the ability to fall back asleep, he sat in the pillows with his eyes open, eventually grabbing his laptop to entertain himself. Augie didn't wake up for another hour, and when he did, he went back to bed for twenty minutes. After that he spoke.

"Want to get some breakfast?"

"Sure." Deveno looked at Augie, and Augie wiped the corner of his eyes and walked out of the room, towards the bathroom. "You have something on your nose." He said as he went out.

Deveno scratched his nose, finding a flaky substance stuck to the underside. He hadn't noticed it before, but there was blood dried to his upper lip, coming out of his nostrils. He thought of it as a late-night nosebleed and scratched it all off. After hibernating his computer he put some clothes on and waited for Augie. Sounds of flushing toilets and running faucets came from the opposite side of the basement, dulled by two doors separating the distance between the washroom apparatuses and the bedroom Deveno sat in. After a moment Augie reappeared and asked his friend to exit the room while he changed, to which Deveno obliged. He used the bathroom as well and tried to make his just-out-of-bed visage look a bit more acceptable. At that point he also noted a few small cuts on his right-hand ring finger, but thought little of them, although not remembering receiving them at any point previous. He soon rejoined with Augie and the two made their way upstairs, though only for enough time to heat up and ingest a pair of previously frozen pre-packaged waffles. After that they returned to Augie's room and resumed the night's previous activities; playing video games, browsing the internet, and chatting about recent affairs. Every once in awhile Augie's guest pivoted his laptop to display a video or image, but other than that the two made little movement, aside from the occasional seating adjustment.

A few hours passed, neither one of the pair keeping track of what time it was. In the middle of watching an online video Deveno's phone vibrated and opening it he read a text message from a parent imploring as to his plans for the day. Not exactly knowing what they were, he asked his friend, and he suggested leaving his house sooner rather than later. Having no objection to the idea, he repeated Augie's message in text form and sent it. A reply followed soon afterward stating that he would be picked up within the hour, and looking at his watch Deveno noticed that it was already 11:20. He mumbled the observation as well as the message of the text he had just received to his friend and slowly began getting his things together. Twenty-five minutes later they said their goodbyes and Deveno was escorted back home.

-x-

The day was a lazy one, Deveno spending most of his time on his computer, much like the rest of his family. He was at his mother's house, his parents being divorced, and the only resident of the building other that his mother was his younger sister. They spent half the week with their mom and the other half with the opposite parent, switching weekends every other week. Every couple of hours Deveno would take a break to get a snack of some sort and use the restroom, but other than that he sat around listlessly browsing the internet. He was fit for the amount of activity he did, which was little more than riding a bicycle to school, and the amount he ate—which he blamed on being a teenager and having a high metabolism. He looked sad, not because of his disposition, but just because of his situation and the way he dealt with it—lounging in his desk chair, slinking lower and lower into it as time passed. He didn't care in the slightest. Nobody had asked anything of him since leaving Augie's, and Deveno was quite alright with that fact.

As the day winded down he eventually ate dinner with the two other members of his family in the house, and then browsed the internet for another eight hours before finally getting up to go to bed. This was usually how nights alone went, he didn't mind this either. He first exited his roomed and crossed the hall to the bathroom, where he relieved himself and stored his contact lenses for use the next morning. Everyone else in the house was already fast asleep, it being around one forty in the morning by the time he got up, and he suspected that it wouldn't be until two that he actually fell asleep. Before leaving the bathroom he inspected himself in the mirror. His hair was brown and unwashed since the previous day, making it curl up in places. He was relieved to find that he didn't have any acne to deal with or anything out of the ordinary about his visage, although his hair was a bit of a mess. As per usual his brown eyes stared back at him upon looking directly into them in the mirror. They looked ever so slightly angled downward, giving Deveno an ever-more droopy look. He turned the lights off in the bathroom and went back across the hall, locking the door behind him as he entered his room. After clearing his bed of clothes and school supplies he turned the alarm off on the clock sitting on one of the many shelves the lined his left wall, and then turned a green nightlight on. It was childish, he knew. But there was not a day in his life that he hadn't been unnerved by the dark. He refused to believe he was scared of it, but what could be in the dark was definitely what he was afraid of. He wasn't exactly a believer in the paranormal, but definitely the supernatural, and he also firmly believed in a difference between the two. If anything made its way into his room in the middle of the night he definitely wanted to know what it was, not suddenly have to grasp around in the blackness for a light switch.

A few miles away Augie had passed out almost four hours ago, not having any activity to entertain himself with after eating dinner and playing a few rounds of something mindless on a video game console. Up to that point his sleep had been like that of someone dead—barely making a sound or any other definably 'live' movement since dozing off. He preferred his room dark, unlike Deveno, and had no very interesting fears to worry about on his end. Looking around his room would reveal an infatuation with LEGO's and odd trinkets he had either made, picked up with his friends, or had been given to him with some matter of importance. Overall it was plain and somewhat well kept, a small old TV supplying video functionality to his multiple consoles and a desk keeping his school supplies and papers in some sort of ordered chaos. A few posters displaying his interests were tacked on the wall, one of some sort of Star Wars rock concert. Nothing happened in either house. Everyone was asleep, even the two dogs that lived lazily at Deveno's house. Nothing happened for many hours. And nothing continued to happen until morning, where Deveno woke up at 11:20 and Augie did the same almost three hours later. Their days progressed as regular Sundays and this trend continued on into their week as they returned to their studies at the local high school. No news was shared on the events of early Saturday as nobody remembered that it had happened. Lives went on as usual, cuts on ring fingers healed and for a month terrors in the wee hours of the morning did not occur.

-x-

Thursday, September 22, 2011. The day before the first day of winter that year. In Deveno and Augie's area it was much too dry for any snow to occur at this time, but it was just about as cold as it would ever get outside. Most all time, if humanly possible, was spent indoors. Even then sweatshirts and some scarves were worn, but that was only at school where heating was sub-par and constantly taking on and off a jacket was a nuisance. At home things could be heated without a care in the world of the upcoming energy bill. There Deveno sat, at his dad's on a Thursday, contemplating the meaningless ramblings of the internet while listening to his favorite livestream as background noise. He had made a pact with himself to go to bed at at least 2:00 am each night as to stay awake for the next morning's Humanities lecture, but this did not always go as planned. Checking his desktop screen it was already 2:45, and he immediately stood up and begun powering off his devices. Just as he was about to lay down in bed, however, he realized that he had left his cellular device's power cord attached to his laptop, which he needed to charge his cell phone for usage tomorrow and for his 7:30 alarm later on that morning. He stood up to retrieve it.

There was a shuffling sound in the basement outside his room.

Not actually having a door for the room at his father's house, he heard it clearly. He lived in an unobstructed downstairs room there. The area was quite cozy; he had a large TV and an even larger desk for holding all the oh-so-important things he needed to get done. The desk was just across from his lack of a door, although this was actually somewhat useful for Deveno—he could swing around in his swivel chair at any time to make sure there was nothing emerging from the omnipotent darkness that existed there. The basement lights were rarely kept on, aside from the ones in his room, and the few windows overlooking the backyard had little to offer past two in the morning. Deveno was frozen in place, halfway to his desk, listening for any signs of something other than him alive in the basement. For ten seconds there was nothing, so he proceeded to his desk, looking out his doorway as he arrived.

Whatever it was' back was turned to Deveno, so it was not alerted to his silent presence. It was naked, bony, and somewhat caveman-like. Deveno could see that the thing's head had somewhat of a curvature forward, possibly forming a sort of shortened snout off the being. Its spine had a few too many bumps for it to be a normal human, however Deveno did not for a second think it was one. The creature crawled about on four very human-like appendages, inspecting what was about and around a stack of sheetrock balanced against the back wall of the basement.

Deveno did not waste a second. As soon as he got a good enough figure on the beast he slid under his desk and hid. He did not remember experiencing any greater fear than right at that moment, remember being the key term. His heard pounded and he clenched that area of his chest as so it would not make much of a recognizable sound. He was wide awake, adrenaline pumping, eyes looking into what he could see of his room from under the desk.

The thing did not seem to notice anything he had done, as Deveno continued to note the occasional rustle of cardboard boxes or dropping of a can of tire cleaner. Nobody in the room above him, which happened to be his dad's, seemed to wake up or make any noise in response to the creature's examination of the basement area. Deveno did not move an inch. The noises continued for five, ten, twenty minutes. He found it strange that it did not react at all to the light that he had left on in his room as a nightlight, and found it even more odd that the being did not enter his room altogether. And, at thirty minutes, the noises stopped altogether and silence again pervaded the ground floor of Deveno's house. He, however, was still much too afraid to return to his bed. After forty-five minutes crammed under his desk, Deveno fell asleep.


End file.
